10 Cloverfield Lane

Hello dear reader, its film time again and as you can tell from the poster above, it’s a film that will fall into what I like to call the ‘Marmite’ category. And by that I mean that it’s either going to be a film you love or a film that you will actively avoid. This can also be said of its predecessor, Cloverfield. 

Back in the latter half of 2007, a trailer appeared for what turned out to be the Matt Reeves monster movie Cloverfield. It was attached to the start of the first Transformers film and it basically did two things. Firstly it proved that even in the early stages of social media and internet spoiler’s, it was possible to make a film that was not only under the radar but also make a film that some Hollywood studios didn’t even get wind of. Secondly, for the better part of the three months between the first trailer going viral and the film’s release, it nearly broke the internet. If you go to YouTube and just type in ‘Cloverfield’, there is page after page of fan theories and conjecture. I can’t think of a marketing strategy and plan that was executed better, when it comes to film.  

Now, I mentioned that Cloverfield is the predecessor to 10 Cloverfield Lane, which in some ways is true. However, both films are neither a sequel or a prequel to each other. The best description I’ve read about the two is that they are blood relatives. But for those of you who are preparing a trip to see 10 Cloverfield Lane, I will say this. They are both very different animals. Cloverfield is, and the statute of limitations on spoilers has well and truly expired here, is a movie about a monster, from somewhere, that has decided to rip Manhattan a new one. 10 Cloverfield Lane most definitely isn’t. 

Do you ever go into a cinema, with expectations of what you’re about to see and then have someone completely pull the rug from under your feet? It doesn’t happen to me that often and I think the last time it did happen to me was with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which I went into thinking I was about to watch a visually stunning science fiction epic, which for the most part it is. But fundamentally it’s a (small spoiler alert) ghost story. The reason I bring this up is because I had some preconceptions about what 10CL would offer up but what I wasn’t anticipating was just how dark the film was going to turn out to be. And by dark I mean its tone, not its lighting. To quote Ren and Stimpy, it is not a ‘Happy happy joy joy’ film at all. 

As for the film itself, I’ll start with the basics. It has a cast list of eight, yes eight. And three of those are only heard as voices. The more observant of you will pick up who Ben on the phone is played by and will realise that it’s not first time he’s been in a film with John Goodman. John himself shares the screen for most of the film with John Gallagher Jr, who is probably most famous for being in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. For many Mary will be an actress who they are not familiar with but she has acting since the late 90’s and has been in Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Tarantino’s Death Proof and the last two Die Hard films, to name but a few. However, as good as those two actors and the performances they give are, they are both put in the shade by Mr Goodman. He plays Howard, an ex-Navy man with a survival fixation. He’s spent the prevailing years building a bunker next to his home, believing that an attack, whether its nuclear, chemical or military in nature is a forgone conclusion and it’s only a matter of when, not if, before it takes place. Howard isn’t evil however he runs the bunker with a very authoritative regimen. ‘His bunker, his rules.’ Although he isn’t evil Howard, is a very unbalanced man. Going from calm to angry in the blink of an eye. 

Mary’s character, Michelle, finds herself waking up in the bunker after being involved in a car crash. Howard has tended to her wounds, put her on an intravenous drip and provided food for her. He then tells her that the air outside has been poisoned as the result of an ‘attack’, which could have originated from outer space and as such she cannot leave. Mary, understandably, doesn’t believe a word of this and promptly puts plans into action, to try and escape back to the outside world. Now, without going into spoiler territory, there is reveal and counter reveal. As I mentioned earlier, the tone of this film is very dark and at times can be uncomfortable to watch. Its’s also worth pointing out that as with The Abyss, 10CL is a tight, claustrophobic, character driven piece that takes a big left turn about three quarters of the way through. It’s been less than twenty four hours since I’ve seen 10CL and I still can’t work out if it’s a film I want to see again. I did enjoy it and I think it’s well worth everyone’s time and effort to go and see it. I just can’t work out if I want to watch John Goodman being Howard again.

As with Cloverfeild, 10CL only appeared a short time before its release. Although there was an even shorter gap between acknowledgment of the film even existing and it taking up schedule space at the local multiplex. The first and only trailer for it was unleashed in mid-January this year (2016) and again, as with Cloverfield, was attached to a Michael Bay film, that being 13 Hours. 

Whilst JJ Abrams was playing director on a small independent sci-fi movie last year, he also had his producer hat on for Paramount. Just an aside here, if you have a spare couple of hours spare, take a look at JJ’s profile on IMDB’s website. He must have an at best, cursory relationship, with sleep. With his supervision, first time film director, Dan Trachtenberg has turned in a film that could be defined, in years to come, as a good base camp to start out from. It’s been eight years between these two films and I wouldn’t mind betting at some point in the future there will be a third. I’ll be keeping an eye on what the internet says JJ and Paramount are up to in 2024 and by then, who knows, we may have reached a point where someone at a major studio is prepared to do the film equivalent of Beyoncé and actually release a major Hollywood film with no build up, no trailers and no marketing and just casually announce that its opening tomorrow, ‘go see it’.   

There are a few things wrong with 10CL and a couple of plot devices that are, in my humble opinion, just a little bit lazy, when it comes to screenwriting. I can see the ending being a problem for some as it offers a promise of things to come that we almost certainly won’t see, at least not yet and the three main characters, on which the film hangs itself on, don’t always feel like they are being that smart. A solid four out of five but may leave a bitter aftertaste… 

Twitter Review:

Above and below, there are monsters everywhere…

#SomeThingWickedThisWayComes

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179933/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHzng8fxLs

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/10-cloverfield-lane/review/

The Martian

Hello dear reader, it’s time once again to offer up my opinions on my most recent trip to the cinema. The film in question this time is of ‘The Martian’ but before I tell you the story about the film I need to, if you’ll indulge me, tell you the story about the book, which the film is based on… 

Along time ago, in a galaxy far far away lived a man by the name of Andy Weir. This man, as luck would have it, had never been stranded on another planet. Not even Mars but he did think it would be a great idea to write a book about someone who was. At the time Mr Weir had no publishing deal in place and in fact the closest he’d ever come to getting anything he’d written exposed to the big wide world was on a website where he would upload short stories.  There he was, sitting on this idea to write a story. Set in the not too distant future. About a man, who through no fault of his own, gets left behind in a totally hostile and inhospitable environment. The planet equivalent of Basildon, if you will. Mr Weir, by his own admission, had a few things in his favour when he started to create this story. Firstly, he is a huge ‘space nerd’, likes ‘relativistic physics’ and as luck would have it has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of ‘manned spaceflight’. His ultimate goal was twofold. He wanted to compose something that would engage the reader and because he was a ‘space nerd’ he also wanted to make sure the science in his new story was correct. So much so, that he wrote his own computer programs to calculate travel times and make sure he got his flight paths hyper accurate. 

Now, as it turns out Mr Weir decided to serialise this novel online. This did two things; firstly it kept people coming back for more and secondly it meant he didn’t have to be finished before he started to upload it. The initial response for the book was more than Weir could ever have hoped for. He was soon being inundated with requests for the finished book to be made available on Kindle, thus making it easier to read on the move. After doing some quick research he found out that you can ‘self-publish’ pretty much whatever you’d like on Kindle and with weeks of his first request he had it available to download for the cheapest price available, 99 cents. Again, the response was nothing short of stunning and word of mouth soon spread. So much so, that within months of it first going live he had publishers asking if they could release it in paperback. Once it was it was only a short time before it started to garner interest from Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Twentieth Century Fox put up the money, Ridley Scott directed it and the all-star cast spend just over two hours and twenty minutes trying to bring Matt Damon’s ‘Mark Watney’, home. 

The first time I became aware of the book ‘The Martian’ was in the latter half of 2014. I heard it being discussed by Adam Savage (Mythbusters) on his podcast ‘Tested’. Adam said he was blown away by it and also said that he picked the book up to read on a flight and by his own admission ‘not been able to put it down’. He waxed lyrical about it’s tension, how it was a one man battle against the odds and that he ‘could not recommend it enough!’ Then I found out that it had been given the green light to be turned into a movie and that none other than sci-fi legend Ridley Scott was going to be sitting in the director’s chair. This basically turned what had been mild curiosity to read the book into an almost ‘I have to see this film at all costs’ kind of deal. 

Now to the business of the film itself. For those of you who have been living under a Martian rock (see what I did there) for the last twelve months or so, The Martian tells the story of the first manned missions to Mars. The ‘Ares Missions’ of which there will be at least 5, are for scientific research purposes and the betterment of mankind as a whole etc etc. The Martian concentrates on Ares 3. A mission that has six crew members and is designed to spend thirty one days on the surface of Mars. Things go wrong and the  mission has to commit an emergency evacuation from the surface due to a very large storm heading towards their base camp and it’s during this evacuation that Matt Damon’s ‘Mark Watney’ gets hit by an airborne communications dish and thrown away from the remaining crew as they head for the escape rocket. Or if you want it in technical NASA speak ‘MAV: Mars Ascent Vehicle’. Now, before you can say ‘Where’s there’s blame, there’s a claim’ the commander of the mission, Jessica Chastain’s ‘Melissa Lewis’ has to make the call to leave. This is partly down to the fact that they have no idea where Watney has ended up. Because of the storm and that visibility is practically zero and also because his spacesuit has stopped transmitting his bio read out information. Lewis has to assume that Watney is dead and as the wind speed is also causing the MAV to tilt past what is an acceptable angle for take-off she has to put the lives of the rest of her crew first. They successfully take off and then we cut to the morning after the night before, with Watney face down and half covered in dirt and sand. What follows is basically the story of one man’s determination to not to die on a planet that at best could be described as a ‘long walk’ away. 

Using only what he has at his disposal (Amazon apparently don’t deliver there….yet) he has to set about ensuring his survival and growing enough food until he thinks NASA will be able to stage a rescue. This last part is also dependant on him being able to contact NASA in the first place and telling them he isn’t dead. Not the easiest of tasks when you consider that the only communications system able to contact them was on the MAV. They say that in space no one can hear you scream, well, just for those not in the know, shouting doesn’t work either. 

The Martian is a shade over two hours and twenty minutes long but it doesn’t feel like a long film at all. From the moment things start to go south on Mars, it grabs your attention and doesn’t give you much of a chance to relax. As I mentioned earlier there is a pretty good supporting cast here and a lot of them don’t really get a huge amount of screen time. People like Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean were more than happy to play second fiddle to Matt Damon. I can only assume the calibre of actor willing to take these small parts is down to two reasons. Firstly the director involved and secondly the quality of the screenplay. Oh and if you happen to find yourself in a pub quiz in the not too distant future and you’re asked to name a film that Sean Bean doesn’t die in, write down The Martian. He does lose his job but I am happy to report that he makes it all the way through to the final credits. Isn’t killed by an Orc or anything!

So I’ll finish up by giving you a few do’s and don’ts about The Martain. If you get the chance, do read the book first. It’s funnier than the film and contains a lot more of the science ‘why’s and wherefores’ that go into Watney’s decision making process. Don’t be put off by the thought of watching someone effectively talking to themselves for two hours. Do make sure that if you wear glasses or contact lenses, you have them in or on as the film is visually breath-taking and finally, once you’ve seen it, don’t give away the ending, Iron Man wouldn’t want you to… 

Twitter Review:

If you like your 'abandoned in space' films with a little bit of a disco theme, then The Martian is definitely for you.

#BringHimHome

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/?ref_=nv_sr_2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej3ioOneTy8

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=139094